Beyond Horror: Finding Final Girls Outside of Horror
Horror is one of the few genres where women are likely to take greater prominence than men, assuming the role of the hero as the story’s Final Girl.
It is the Final Girl’s struggles we follow, their fears and hopes we share, and the victories we root for. Horror’s trailblazing focus on women is only now being caught up on by more action/danger centric genres; such as sci-fi, adventure and fantasy, where women have traditionally taken on a more supporting role.
Therefore, it isn’t surprising that female leads in other genres are often reminiscent of the Final Girl, for it is in the role of the Final Girl that we may have been most used to seeing a woman take the lead as a hero.
(Well, the Final Girl and the Disney Princess. And if Disney had stuck to the Grimm’s fairy tales a little bit more, it would have been hard to tell the difference between the two character types.)
In this (totally unbiased and impartial list) I will be exploring the top five female leads in non-horror genres, who give Final Girl “vibes”.
In making this list, I will be looking for characters who embody the traits and tropes of the Final Girl that make her so enduring.
For this list, I am looking for female characters who;
-Are an underdog of some form, partaking in a “David and Goliath” battle where the odds are stacked against her.
-Experience some sort of isolation, reminiscent of the Final Girl’s role as Last Woman Standing.
-Face great peril and endure terrible horrors, overcoming them where others fail.
-Undergo a significant change, leaving behind innocence and vulnerability, and transforming into something deadly.
-Possess a virtue that helps them overcome great evil (not necessarily abstinence.)
Anya/Anastasia (the animated Anastasia movie)
Well, let’s start with the obvious. Anastasia is very much the final girl, being the last of the Romanovs. (At least in this animated musical film by Don Bluth. In real life, Anastasia died with the rest of the family, gossip and conspiracy theories aside.)
Like many Final Girls, Anastasia is beautiful, but she isn’t vain, and she spends a good portion of the film in rags. She is royal, but unpretentious and very down to earth, partly in thanks to having been raised in an orphanage, all memories of her royal life reduced to mere shadows and echoes.
Anastasia is a bold, proud, brave and deliciously snarky young woman, who for all her sarcasm, is driven by a deep optimism and a belief that she will one day be reunited with her family. And yet, for all her strengths, there is an underlying vulnerability. Her loneliness, her missing memories, and her defensiveness towards her equally sarcastic love interest Dimitri, brings this otherwise fierce and fiery young woman a great deal of pathos.
Her combination of strength and vulnerability makes her eminently likeable, and are traits she shares with many Final Girls, for while their strength allows them to overcome their foes, it is their vulnerability that raises the tension and makes their victory all the more wonderful.
In the end, the final battle comes down to between Anastasia and Rasputin (in the movie an animated corpse kept alive by dark magic in order to reap revenge on the Romanovs.) While she does work together with Dimitri (and her pet dog) to defeat Rasputin, both are momentarily taken out in order to allow Anastasia to have the last epic showdown, allowing her to destroy Rasputin and have her vengeance for what he did to her family.
Arya Stark (A Song of Ice and Fire-GRRM)
(Due to divergence of book and show canon, this article will focus primarily on Arya Stark from the book series; A Song of Ice and Fire, as opposed to the adaptation, Game of Thrones.)
A Song of Ice and Fire notably has many interesting and complex female characters, whose journeys we follow from their own perspective. As such, a case can be made for multiple female leads at some point exhibiting “Final Girl” traits. (Daenerys, Sansa, Brienne etc…) However, for this article, I wish to focus on the younger Stark sister, Arya.
Arya is introduced to the narrative as a bold, sociable and curious young girl, with a zest for adventure and an ability to make friends wherever she goes. Unlike her sister, who aspires towards perfect lady-dom, and is very conscious of her status as the Warden of the North’s daughter, Arya is friendly to people from all walks of life.
She is known as “Arya Underfoot” by her father’s household, due to always being around, getting involved in whatever they are doing. She plays games with lower class children, follows her father’s example of listening to the work and troubles of Northern smallfolk and servants, even comes up with nicknames for their babies, and in particular she befriends the butcher’s boy, Micah.
Her great unhappiness is her inability to fit into her society’s rigid expectations for women, especially in comparison to her seemingly perfect older sister. As such, despite her pride in being a Stark, she also has a sense of humility beneath her outward confidence. Aside from her struggle under Westeros’s stifling gender roles, Arya begins the narrative as an innocent, happy, and warm hearted young girl who loves her family (especially her big brother, Jon Snow.)
Over the course of the series, Arya suffers greatly; (her and pretty much every other character.) As a young young girl, forced to walk a war torn and viciously misogynistic country under an assumed identity in her search for sanctuary (and vengeance for her fallen loved ones), Arya is arguably one of the most vulnerable characters within the series, without even the value as a Stark hostage to protect her.
She endures the worst of the horrors inflicted on the smallfolk, along with the additional threat of her identity being exposed, all the while coping with the grief of what has befallen her family. As one of the few Starks remaining, and as a girl on the run, Arya is very much isolated, and has to cope with the knowledge that a great part of her family is dead.
Arya copes through a mix of street smarts, fighting skills, and pure grit. She is no seasoned warrior, being a child with only a beginner’s knowledge of fighting, but everything she knows she puts to use.
Like all Final Girls, she is constantly put up against foes bigger than herself, and while she survives and lands victories against her tormentors, these victories come at a cost. The innocent, loving and open hearted young girl we meet in Game of Thrones gradually transforms into a child soldier. The last we see of her, she is in training to become an assassin.
However, Arya’s ability to form connections and feel affection wherever she goes hasn’t quite been beaten out of her yet.
The Final Girl’s virtue being her saving grace is an old trope, and even as Arya inevitably becomes morally grey in the face of great evils and suffering, her ability to reach out to others and form bonds; in a world where almost everyone seems to be out for themselves, saves her neck more than once, and may be the very thing that saves her from falling into darkness. Her greatest virtue manages to be her greatest strength.
Katniss Everdeen (The Hunger Games-Suzanne Collins)
Katniss Everdeen, the Girl on Fire. Perhaps one of the most iconic female heroines of the 21st century, and a major player in the ensuing popularity of Dystopian Young Adult fiction. At once prickly and tender, jaded and loving, she’s a complex and complicated character, not always likeable but unfailingly loveable.
As a contestant in The Hunger Games, she’s got that Last Woman standing trope down pat. The entire set up of the games is for 24 children from the oppressed districts of Panem (formerly the USA) to fight each other to death for the entertainment of the Capitol.
There is something reminiscent of the typical slasher, set in a Summer Camp or holiday cabin in the woods, about The Hunger Games. Teenagers on the verge of adulthood, taken from their homes and gathered in one place, to be hunted down for sport, to the amusement of the viewers.
The “career” pack (children specially trained and brainwashed into believing that participation in The Hunger Games is a great honour), are cocky, bold and arrogant, travelling together in a pack like a band of highschool bullies. In their cliqueness and over-confidence, we see the jocks and the flirts, the drinkers and the druggies, the “immoral” teens who are judged and punished while the pure and worthy Final Girl is allowed to live.
Once she has suffered enough for the audience’s entertainment.
That element of judgement is carried over in the tradition of Capitol viewers laying bets on the survival of the tributes, and sending in gifts and signing up to sponsor the tributes they find most “worthy”, whether it be through skill, charm, personality or looks. Just as some sort of greater force strikes down the “sinning” teenagers and protects the “worthy” Final Girl, the privileged and powerful Capitol citizens dictate the fates of the unfortunate teenagers from the comforts of their own homes.
Katniss and her onscreen love interest Peeta manage to gain enough sympathy to not only survive the games, but defy the rules that only one must survive.
As a girl from one of the poorest districts, up against 23 competitors, the odds are far from in Katniss’s favour. And once she has survived the games and is now facing a deadly war between the rebels and the Capitol, who jointly see Katniss as a symbol of rebellion, the David vs Goliath theme only increases.
Katniss ultimately survives, having struck down the series’s ultimate villain, when they seemed to be at the peak of their victory, but this is following a big pile up of bodies, and a whole load of trauma. Katniss starts off the series as a fairly cynical teenage girl, but the suffering she endures throughout the novel leaves her deeply traumatised. It is only through time and care that she begins to rebuild her life, and even as her story ends on an optimistic note, it’s made clear she still has to work daily in order to cope with life following the terrors of her young adulthood.
Éowyn (Lord of the Rings- Tolkien)
Éowyn isn’t the lead in Lord of the Rings, but she is the most prominent female character in the books. She undergoes trials, faces evils and overcomes monsters, both external and internal.
Her journey is one we follow closely, with an intimacy that is otherwise reserved for male characters. While Arwen’s role is expanded in the films, Éowyn is no less prominent, and her epic battle against the Witch King of Angmar is one of the most iconic moments in both book and film.
When we first meet Éowyn, she is a classic Gothic Heroine. She is fair, beautiful, virtuous, but tortured by inner demons. She is trapped in the role of dry nurse to her fading uncle, caged within their ancient castle, and stalked by the machinations of the ambitious and lustful Grima Wormtongue.
It is only the arrival of the Fellowship and the healing of her uncle that transforms her genre from horror to fantasy.
However, Éowyn’s trials are not yet over. She is brave, a skilled and valiant shieldmaiden, who longs to face the evil terrorising her land and throw off the shackles that her gender has placed on her. Her isolation is only somewhat eased after the downfall of Wormtongue, for she still carries the burden of all she has suffered under Wormtongue’s rule, and she is still kept on the fringes, a lone woman among men. Beloved and respected, but not part of the brotherhood, as this visceral image reveals;
““The trumpets sounded. The horses reared and neighed. Spear clashed on shield. Then the king raised his hand, and with a rush like the sudden onset of a great wind the last host of Rohan rode thundering into the West.
Far over the plain Éowyn saw the glitter of their spears, as she stood still, alone before the doors of the silent house.”
Her womanhood makes her an underdog. She is ruled by her male kin, and any authority granted to her is as a last resort when there are no other men available for the role. This causes her to empathise with the hobbit, Merry, who is likewise left behind and overlooked due to his stature. She sees in him her own courage and desire to fight, and secretly smuggles him into battle when she herself sneaks off to war in the guise of a man. This act of kindness reaps her all sorts of karmic rewards when Merry proves pivotal in her battle against the Witch King of Angmar.
Éowyn’s confrontation with the Witch King most certainly ticks off all the underdog boxes. That her womanhood plays a thematic role in her survival “I am no Man/No man am I, you look upon a woman!” cements her similarities to the Final Girl, who is (as you can probably guess from the label) usually a girl.
The nature of her survival is also reminiscent of another trope associated with the Final Girl. Traditionally, the Final Girl survives because she is good and virtuous, and worthy of life where others fail to be.
Here, it is not Éowyn’s virginity or abstinence from drink that saves her, but her kindness towards Merry. A kindness she alone shows, when all others would have left him behind.
Éowyn does undergo a significant change, however the change she undergoes at first almost seems like a reversal of the traditional Final Girl transformation. She enters the story cold, proud and desirous of battle, and ends the story happy, warm, with a sense of hope restored.
(Falling in love with a kind and handsome prince who praises your valour while also sympathising with your suffering, then moving with him to a beautiful garden kingdom will do that for you.)
This is the antithesis of the state the Final Girl usually ends up in. However, the shift from vulnerability and helplessness to strength and durability remains.
Éowyn’s coldness and wish for death in battle are the products of her growing sense of despair and futility. Come the end of the books, she has regained control over her life, has found new cause for hope, and is making plans for a future where she can begin to heal both herself and the world around her, following the horrors of war. No longer is she standing on faltering feet, caged and cowering under the shadow of Mordor. Now she is ready to fight back and help restore Middle Earth to a place of growth and happiness.
(She is in a fantasy, after all. And not a grimdark GRRM fantasy. It seems Fantasy Final Girls are more likely to get a happy ending than their horror counterparts, and Éowyn of all characters deserves one.)
Gwen Cooper (Torchwood- BBC)
If you have watched this gem of a Doctor Who Spin-Off, all about a ragtag band of Alien hunters based in Cardiff, you would know that Gwen Cooper isn’t just like a Final Girl, she is a Final Girl.
She starts the series, naïve, out of her depth and filled with wide eyed wonder at the world she has plunged into. (And that’s not a figure of speech, her actress, Eve Myles, has eyes that would put Bambi to shame.)
It is Gwen’s ardent curiosity and stubborn will that sees her plunged into the world of Torchwood. Ignoring all the warning signs (like a hospital porter getting devoured by the jaws of a sewer alien before her very eyes) and the cautions of her friends and colleagues, PC Gwen Cooper starts digging into the mystery behind Torchwood after encountering them one stormy night at the scene of a local murder.
By the end of the very first episode, this run of a mill copper has already witnessed monsters, murder, intrigue, suicide and betrayal.
And it only gets more intense from there.
Gwen’s innocence and normality is immediately put under strain. Her naivety and her struggle to adapt to this cruel but addictive new world sees her make mistakes both in her work and her personal life. Her inexperience causes her to make poor professional judgements, while her increasing trauma and isolating causes her to drive away her former friends, and betray her loving boyfriend, Rhys.*
*(Here is the single area where Gwen is very much not like a classic Final Girl. She isn’t murdered for having sex. Not even extra-marital sex. And while all the lead cast members who died did have sex, that’s only because Torchwood really loves making the most of its post-watershed air slot, and is made up of a cast who seem to think that the only way to wind down after a hard day hunting aliens is to seduce each other.)
Gwen only manages to come to grips with her work by embracing the moral ambiguity of the world of Torchwood, becoming increasingly willing to make harsh and tragic choices for the greater good, and letting her old life and personal relationships take a back seat.
In episode three, season one, Gwen is noted to have never used a gun before, and ends the episode in despair because an un-convicted rapist literally walked onto the knife she was holding.
By season three Gwen is jumping through air, dual gun wielding, fighting off assassins without blinking an eye.
Season four, Gwen is practically raring to go to get stuck into some violence, pulling her guns at a drop of a hat, and laying her fists onto anyone who so much as looks at her funny.
By the end of Season four, Gwen has even aimed her gun at best friend, Captain Jack Harkness, twice. The first time to save her family, the second time to sacrifice him for the greater good of the entire world. She does so without apology or doubt, even when said sacrifice also means losing the rest of her friends and her beloved father. Gwen Cooper is here to save the day, even if it costs her everything to do so.
So how does a Bambi-eyed beat officer transform into a ruthless one woman army? Well, she’s a Final Girl. She starts the series as the co-lead of a cast of five. By season four, only she and Captain Jack are alive from that original five. And Jack is immortal and has a habit of jumping off into space when things get too depressing on Earth, leaving Gwen the last woman standing of the original Torchwood team.
As with all the best Final Girls, the experience of losing her loved ones, having her innocence stripped away from her, and facing down mortal danger, pushed beyond all endurance, leaves Gwen bitter, jaded and ruthless, but also strong, resourceful, with an iron will, which allows her to always come out fighting, no matter what shit the world throws at her.